A New York year
by lostinprocrastination
Summary: Emma (and Henry) start having incredibly heartwarming and vivid dreams about a group of people in a small-town off the coast right after they drive back from their Maine getaway. Ends with the final scene in "Going home", with Hook at their door.
1. Chapter 1

For as long as she can remember ever having tasted alcohol, Emma Swan's favorite drink was rum-laced coconut water. Not coconut juice, not that Malibu Rum crap. Coconut water.

Every time she managed to find a restaurant or bar that would serve it to her or she prepared one for herself at home, she'd dig into the hidden corners of her mind trying to figure out just where the hell had that come from, because she doesn't even remember tasting it for the first time. It's like some innate truth about her. It was definitely not something she had picked up from any of the foster families that had taken her in over the years, not any friends from school, not Neal – no, Neal was a beer man, she recalled. She could never drink beer again after she finished her sentence and got Henry back with the help of a social worker. Go figure.

That evening, after driving almost six hours from the coast of Maine to reach the loft she shared with Henry in the middle of Manhattan, all she could think about was taking off her shoes and bra, send her son to the shower and relax on the couch with a glass of what she thought of as a sense of comfort and belonging in the form of a drink. True, it had been nice whisking her boy away to the middle of nowhere without phones and computers and anything of the sort for an entire weekend, just the two of them, without any outside interference, but as they drove home she couldn't help but feel like something was suddenly missing. She wasn't exactly sad, for Henry's presence would always be a source of immense happiness to her, but it was like something had been taken from her. From them, actually. The moment the alcohol touched her lips, though, was when Henry came out of the bathroom wrapped in a fluffy bathrobe with a smile. "All yours, mom!" The sight of her little guy and the taste of her drink shoved all negative thoughts away and as she licked her lips she felt a familiar warmth within her. _Just the right amount of rum this time..well done, Swan_, she thought to herself as she put the empty glass in the kitchen sink and went towards the bathroom for her own shower. The clock over the counter marked 8.15 pm.

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Phoenx, Arizona, the women's ward at the State Correctional Complex's Medical Center. Bound to the bed by shackles around her ankles, a devastated 18-year-old Emma refuses to even look at her newborn. She had decided that giving him up for adoption was his best chance.

"Emma, just so you know…you _can_ change your mind."

"No. I can't be a mother."

And that was it. Without ever laying her eyes on Henry even once, she made the doctor take him away for his own sake…and for hers.

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Emma woke up sweaty and terrified. She leapt out of bed and went straight to Henry's room, who met her halfway there. He was also sweaty and startled and mother and son were hugging each other as tightly as they possibly could.

"Are you okay, kid? Are you feeling anything?"

"I…I'm fine… Mom? What happened?"

"I just had a bad dream, I dreamt that…you know what, it's fine, we're good, you're here and it wasn't real. It doesn't matter. What about you, did you have a bad dream too?"

"Yeah, I guess…I don't even remember it though. Let's just go to bed again, we'll be fine."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Good night, kid."

"Good night, mom."

As Henry went back to his room and got on the bed, he felt a little bad for having lied to his mother, but he couldn't bring himself to tell her that he did remember his dream, vividly, about a dark-haired woman named Regina holding him and calling him her son…and that it didn't feel weird in any way. What did feel weird, and made him wake up, was that, well…it made him feel good, and safe, and _loved_.


	2. Chapter 2

For the rest of the night Emma was in a state of alert, never allowing herself to fall in the deep sleep required to dream. Even after checking up on Henry and making sure he was there in the next room, just the thought of having given him up hurt too much. Broke her. And the fact that he'd had a bad dream of his own at the same time, well, she wasn't gonna take any chances.

It took everything in her to not let her son realize the depth of her zombie state in the morning, though it helped that every day she followed the exact same routine: get out of bed at the 8.15 alarm; shake a protesting Henry out of bed; brush teeth; turn on the radio; get the eggs in the frying pan; heat the milk. In the meantime, Henry would stop protesting being thrown out of bed only when he shoved the toothbrush in his mouth, and then he would water the plants and get the breakfast table ready, including getting the whipped cream, the cinnamon and the cocoa powder.

They sat down to eat, made a toast with their cocoa cups, and drank up. Emma felt her energy and vitality levels instantly replenished, as if she hadn't been up all night worried sick about dreams. Freaking _dreams_.

"Seriously, Swan, get yourself together. Jesus."

"What was that, mom?"

"Oh, nothing, kid, just lost in thought. Don't worry about it."

"Are you sure? Because I could stay home and take care of you if you're feeling–"

"I know what this is, Henry, you're trying one of your getting-out-of-school schemes. Have they, in the history of the world, ever worked?"

"Mom, no, you really do look like you could use a day off and since there's no-one else to take care of you I just thought–"

"Yeah, good to know my own son thinks I look like crap." At Henry's eyeroll, she goes on: "And do I need to remind you of my superpower? I know you're not really worried about my well-being…" – he raises his head in protest – "…_as_ you're interested in skipping school. Am I wrong?"

"No…" he says with an even bigger eyeroll.

"Well then. Go get dressed, we have to leave in ten minutes tops."

"Fine…"

"Fine!"

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That night she decides not to have any alcohol before bed, but a hot cocoa instead – with cinnamon, of course, always with cinnamon. She figures it made her feel so much better in the morning that it should help her sleep better too.

It works, and she has a great dream about sharing that very same drink over and over with a woman with pixie dark hair in a small coastal town somewhere – Maine? Yeah, her recent weekend trip was certainly playing a part in it. She can't really make out the woman's face, or the faces of any of the other people they encounter, but she can feel her affection. Most times Henry is there with them, and after some time a man with dark blonde hair and a soft voice, who's clearly the woman's partner, also becomes a constant presence and source of warmth.

When she wakes up, she's actually happy. For some reason, she feels deeply loved. It is however followed by anger, anger at herself for thinking that maybe this is a way of her subconscious to let her know that maybe she needs friends, people other than just Henry to share her life with, and no, _screw this_, she loved her son and he would never not be enough. She had everything she needed, _thank you very much_.

Still, she figured out that, hey, if she wasn't going to seek out new people to fulfill her waking life, she might as well let her mind _go crazy_ at night, right? And so even with part of herself protesting that this was incredibly stupid and childish and _what the hell, Swan, you are almost thirty years old, what do you think you are doing_, that night she has a hot cocoa with cinnamon before bed. And for several nights after that.


	3. Chapter 3

As the dreams went on, the people around her felt more and more real, even if her inability to make out their faces remained. So much so that during the day she felt as if they really existed in a small town somewhere off the coast of Maine and were watching over her, and whenever for some reason she didn't dream she missed them.

Those reasons invariably involved worrying about Henry, be it because he was sleeping over at a new friend's or because he spent all night getting sick after eating a whole pack of cookies in a matter of minutes. She would doze off from time to time, but always stayed alert enough so that a phone ring or her boy's scream would have her up and fully functioning immediately. She was used to that. However, nothing, _absolutely nothing_, could have prepared her for one afternoon in late April when he seemed perfectly fine until he came down with a fever that couldn't be controlled or explained. Giving him a shower and some Tylenol only seemed to make it worse, so she drove him to the nearest hospital.

Filling in his file in the waiting room she was quite calm, but then as if out of thin air Henry lost all color on his lips and fell to the ground. It took two male nurses to keep Emma from staying by his side into the restricted area where he was examined and had blood and urine samples collected. The fever wouldn't subside nor he would regain consciousness, but since the results didn't indicate any kind of abnormality, let alone anything contagious, she was allowed to stay in his room overnight.

Emma was at a loss – she could see on Henry's chart that his vitals were perfectly normal, but he just wouldn't wake up. She was not religious in any way because _I'm sorry, but I make my own destiny, not some almighty God_, but that evening she prayed to whoever would listen for her boy to just get better. When she was done, she stood from her chair in tears and pressed a kiss to his forehead. As if magically, all color went back to his lips and he opened his eyes.

"Mom? What happened? Where are we? Why are you crying?"

"Oh my god, Henry! We're in the hospital, you were feverish and unconscious!"

"Really? 'Cos I feel great…maybe just a little groggy, like I've slept too much, but…"

"Are you sure?" she said pressing a hand to his neck and realizing that he didn't have a fever anymore. "How is this possible?"

"I don't know, but I feel fine. Can we go home?"

When she called the nurse, she looked at the clock on the wall above the bed. It marked 8.15.

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They got home after a new round of exams gave the exact same unaltered results as before and Henry was released. The rest of the night was spent with him playing videogames under his mother's watchful eye, as if she was expecting her son to collapse again at any second, and it was actually starting to unnerve him a little.

"Mom, it's fine, you don't need to stay here, nothing's gonna happen!"

"You don't know that, Henry, it's like you were laying lifeless in that hospital…"

"Mom, please, you don't need to cry, I feel great, seriously…can't you tell I'm not lying?"

She honestly couldn't. As much as she relied on her "superpower", as she called it, of knowing with absolute accuracy when people were lying to her – which was very useful in her line of work as an insurance claim inspector – in the rare times her emotions were involved it would throw her completely off. Still, she _was_ exhausted, physically and mentally, and decided they should _both_ go to bed. Henry tried to argue that he was _all slept out_ for the day, as he put it, but on top of everything else it was a school night so that was that.

"Really? You want me to go to school tomorrow? I was, like, laying _lifeless_ in a hospital bed not four hours ago!"

She couldn't avoid a chuckle. Yeah, he was fine.

"Don't start with me, Henry, let's go!"

"Okay, fine, but…I may need some cocoa to get me in the mood."

"_In the mood_? Alright, kid, you win, a cocoa it is…"

And she didn't stop laughing and smiling at her wonderful little boy until she laid down on her own bed and met with her Maine _family_ in a matter of minutes.

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The dream she had that night was rather strange, as everyone gathered around the woman with short dark hair who would often stand beside Henry. She seemed to be devastated and begging for everyone's forgiveness, especially his, and held him as only a parent would. She never figured out what the woman had done that was so terrible, and in the end it was as if everything was alright. When she woke up, Emma was surprised she didn't feel threatened by a woman holding her boy so dearly, but rather glad that he was loved.

In the morning, they went about their routine as if nothing had happened. When they finally sat down to eat breakfast, they got their pancakes and the syrup…apple syrup. For some reason neither of them could really explain, they wouldn't even touch it so Emma just threw it in the trash. They never had an apple or anything apple-flavored again.


	4. Chapter 4

Emma had a certain reputation in the insurance business. Because of her _superpower_, she had saved her bosses millions of dollars in would-be payments to illegal schemers; on the other hand, she had a fierce sense of fairness that would make her go to the last consequences in order to prevent honest insured people not be paid what they were due. Her superiors learned very early on not to even try to cross her, but legitimate insurance claims were usually far less costly than the fraudulent ones would be anyway. Besides, she was usually game for any emergency, be it at night or on weekends or even during her vacations and days off – unless she was out of town or couldn't figure what to do with Henry – so they not only kept her around, but compensated her accordingly.

One Sunday afternoon, her phone rang. It wasn't even one of her direct bosses. The chief of the New York bureau was on the line summoning her to a Fifth Avenue penthouse where its 63-year-old banker owner had been shot blank in the chest. Four of her colleagues had been there all day along with as much as twenty of NYPD's _finest_ (that always made her chuckle) trying to figure out exactly what had happened. The man's son kept saying it must have been a random robber who got startled by his father's arrival, shot him and fled without even thinking of taking anything while his wife, in shock, just rocked back and forth in a corner. It didn't take Emma long to figure out that the deceased cheated repeatedly on his wife ever since they got married and after she came across proof of his illegal financial activities she forced him to arrange his own death so she could claim his hundred million-dollar policy or she would go to the FBI. The orchestration had all been done by the couple's son.

"Jesus Christ…straight out of CSI, that one. How did you realize the woman was acting, Emma? We were with her for _hours_ before you came in!"

"Everyone has a talent, I guess" she smiled. "But hey, are you telling me you haven't seen worse? You know those cop shows bring real-life cases to the screen, right?"

"I don't think Sarah was talking about the sordidness or the _human condition_, Emmz, just that a cheesy mystery writer couldn't have imagined a more cliché-ridden story if they wanted to!"

"Bingo!"

"Oh, I see, so _that_ was why you guys didn't see it…you actually _saw_ it, but thought it was too obvious to be true!"

"Basically, yeah!"

The five colleagues were laughing as they entered a posh-looking cocktail bar nearby at about eight. After the afternoon she'd had, she decided to take advantage of the fact that Henry was sleeping over at a friend's and would only be back home after school the next day and decided to let go a little. Her eyes sparkled when she saw "coconut water" as a possible ingredient on their drink menu.

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When the taxi dropped her off at her building around eleven, Emma was actually a little bit tipsy, and other than being glad Henry wouldn't bear witness to her state she didn't really care. She hadn't had her rum-laced coconut water in a while and was just reminded how _delicious_ that was, so she had two…or five. _I mean, who's counting, right_?

She didn't even shower, she just took off her clothes and off to bed she went in her underwear. She didn't want the water to wash off the carelessness and light-headedness she was feeling, and when she slept she didn't dream of her Maine friends, though the lingering feeling of being deeply loved was still there. She dreamed of climbing some sort of giant plant, finding treasure, stirring a pirate ship and walking around a jungle where it was always night. All that in the constant company of the bluest eyes she had ever seen, the huskiest, sexiest voice she had ever heard (_and that accent…damn_), an amazing scent of leather and rum and salty water and a stubble that felt _incredible_ around her cheeks and chin when she grabbed this mystery man for a long, passionate kiss by the lapels of his coat that took both their breaths away.

When Emma's alarm clock went off at 8.15 on Monday, she expected to have a terrible hangover; instead, she felt amazing in her underwear with her arms and legs wrapped tightly around one of her big pillows.

_Damn, Swan, get your shit together…thank GOD Henry isn't here_.

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The next few nights were spent in the company of the same man. At the same time he demonstrated to have absolutely no clue of the concept of personal space, he never tried to actually touch her in any way. Seemed to respect her timing and wishes _a little bit too much_, if you asked Emma, but she found him unnerving in the same measure she found him _absolutely delightful_. Not even among the _Charming Mainers_, as she got to call them in her head, she found herself smiling so sincerely and so brightly. Besides, she could feel the electricity just by standing next to him.

It wasn't long before the dreams somehow mixed, and the man appeared in the same setting as the others. At first he stood apart from the group, but eventually made his way in and became just one of them, always at her side, always making her _feel good_.

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She dreamed about kissing him sometimes, but it was invariably that same kiss as the first time. It was _one hell _of a kiss, sure, but it always left her wondering why she couldn't imagine _anything else_. She would think about the man during the day, but as was the case with the _Charming Mainers_ his face never appeared completely to her and that made things _a little bit_ more difficult. She could ever only see his eyes, his jaw line with the stubble and his lips. Oh, those lips…

"Mom, you forgot something."

"Right. Cinnamon." _Stop daydreaming in front of Henry, Swan, get your head in the game._ "Here you go."

They sprinkle the powder on the whipped cream over their hot cocoas and are doing their traditional toast to the day when they hear a rather _intense_ knocking on their front door.

"Someone coming over?"

"No…"

At that, the intense knocking turns into a downright violent banging.

"Henry, wait here", says Emma as she makes her way to the front door, for some reason taking the time to turn off the radio in the living room.

She opens the door to a man, a man she has never seen before…or has she? He has intense blue eyes, a strong jaw line with a stubble and a voice…

"Swan", he almost whispers, as he opens a wide smile full of relief and something else, something that looks and feels like, well, _love_. "At last–"

She snaps out of it just as he's making his way into her apartment and _what the hell is this goddamn stranger thinking_? "Whoa, do I know you?"

"Look, I need your help, something's happened, something terrible, your family is in trouble–"

"_My family_ is right here, who are_ you_?"

"An old friend. Look, I know you can't remember me, but…I can make you."

His right hand cradles her head and his lips make their way to hers. For what can't be more than one tenth of a second, she closes her eyes and takes in his scent of leather and rum and sea water and feels his soft lips and the brush of his stubble and all of a sudden _Jesus Fucking Christ what the hell is happening_ and she doesn't even think, she just knees him right where she knows it will hurt and he retreats in pain until he reaches the wall in the corridor outside. She isn't angry though. What she is is genuinely startled and, well, a little bit breathless.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"A long shot. I had to try. I was hoping you felt as I did."

"All you're gonna feel is the handcuffs when I call the cops."

"Look, I know this seems crazy," and at this point the man is practically shouting in what is clearly equal parts physical pain and desperation, "but you have to listen to me, you have to remem–" And that was finally the cue for Emma to slam the door in his face.

"Who was that?" asks Henry from the kitchen.

"No idea. Someone must have left the door open downstairs." Still a little breathless, she licks her lips. _Some drunk. Some gorgeous drunk, with amazing blue eyes, a sexy accent with crazy talk. Only in New York, amirite?_ "Come on. Let's eat."


End file.
